Better [Vegas] late than never

Last week I met a group of my high school alum chums (some from elementary school on) in Las Vegas for a mini-reunion. There were some who had been good friends back then and some I had known in school but not well. Spouses were included.

This was my—and my spouse's—first time in Vegas. (Yes, you read that right. In our upper 60s and never been to Vegas!) I had a great time, mainly because of the interaction with the friendly and welcoming group of grads and their partners, but I came to these conclusions about this vacation destination:

I liked...

The late night hours of the restaurants and shops. Even though we rarely stay out late anymore, it's nice to know something's available if needed or wanted.

The over-the-top decor in the hotels and casinos. No cheap materials used in the mosaic-tiled and marble floors, leather wall coverings, blown glass chandeliers. Lovely to look at, even if I wouldn't necessarily use these in my own home.

The availability of so many shows nearby, with top-level stars. But if you want to see more than one, you might have to cash in one of your CDs.

The fact that I got my share of exercise because, as I heard about ten times during this vacation, "Nothing is as close as it looks."

I didn't like...

The smell of cigarette smoke—and stale cigarette smoke—in and around every single casino. Didn't Las Vegas gamblers get the message that smoking can kill you?

The fact that the hotels usually do not have the expected comfortable lobbies, with sofas, chairs, and free WiFi. Of course, they don't want you to sit and schmooz or access your emails. They want you to gamble, gamble, gamble.

Gambling. It's just not for me. Yes, I like hitting a button and watching my investment of a dollar grow to nine or ten dollars, but I really hate seeing it plunge to zero.


But the reason for the gathering was to get reaquainted with our childhood friends and memories. People our age get so mellow and appreciative when we visit those who shared our formative years, and these few days were a love-fest. After reminding each other of the silly, even embarrassing things we did and misconceptions we had in school, we decided that we need to stick together. After all, together we make up one solid memory bank. We need each other to fill in our blanks.

The comeback kid (with a few changes)

From time to time, I assess the qualities in myself that I would like to change but know I won’t. Especially now that I’m of a certain age.

It’s not that changing one’s basics is always impossible at a late age, but we have to be realistic and admit we will probably go on being what we’ve always been. And then there are the attributes we can’t change, like body parts and organs. (Granted, modern medicine makes almost anything possible, but I'm not sure I'd take the risk.)

So I play the game of “If I’m reincarnated, here’s how I’d like to come back…” This is assuming I’d still be a Jewish girl from Chicago. Here’s my wish list:

• Thin thighs—not too thin but pleasingly curvy
• Thick, straight, shiny hair that’s easy to style, doesn’t frizz in hot and wet weather, and looks great windblown
• A passion for sports or at least an appreciation of football, baseball, and basketball so I can watch games with the in crowd and enjoy Super Bowl Sunday parties
• Organization skills...not to be scary organized, like someone who alphabetizes items in their medicine cabinet, but able to stay on top of bills, appointments, and deadlines with ease
•  A little more of me on top and less on the bottom. Now that I know that being pear-shaped is healthier than being apple-shaped, I'm more appreciative of what I've got. But can I request hourglass-shaped?
• Much less concern about wrinkles. Not the ones that are slowly making their appearance on my face and neck—and arms. Clothing wrinkles. I refuse to travel with linen and choose everyday items based on the material (wrinkle-free, packable, patterned so wrinkles won't show, or ruffled or otherwise textured so wrinkles don't have a place to land). I worry about how I'm sitting before I get to a party. Heaven forbid I walk in with big creases on my lap and backside. I will give myself credit, however, for not giving wrinkles a thought once I arrive. It's just the prep that has me in a neurotic grip.

There's more on my wish list, but what's the point? I'm probably not coming back. I never did believe in Bridey Murphy and others that followed.

And here's a disclaimer: I'm really quite satisfied with who I am, most of the time. But it's great fun to think about this. I can even work on these wishes to get closer to my ideal. Except one: I'll never love sports.

Random Musings

I have thoughts. Sometimes they're not very deep. (Did I say "sometimes"?) I've gathered some of them here for no particular purpose—except to amuse you or make you murmur "and she used to be so much more interesting..."

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Are we obsolete? We have lived so many decades and learned so much. But is anyone still using what we've learned, and perfected? The first thing that comes to mind is cursive writing. I read recently that some schools, or maybe it's most schools, are not going to teach it anymore. Hardly anyone writes in longhand. But I can't really get on my soapbox and lament the passing of this art because, since I've begun writing everything on the computer, my handwriting has gotten so bad, I can't read what I've written just a few days ago.

And what about grammar? I still care, but does anyone else? By that I mean anyone else in Gen X or Gen Y.

And don't get me started about manners and civil behavior. I wouldn't for a second want to go back to the repressive 50s, when you didn't dare speak up or dress out of the norm. But does anyone else remember being taught to respect others?

Then there are traffic laws. I don’t really fit into today’s society because I try very hard to obey all traffic laws. Okay, I drive from 5 to 10 miles over the limit, but I swear everybody else is passing me by. I don’t get into the left turn bay until I’m supposed to (that means no driving over the road divider for several car lengths), even when it means I’ll probably miss the green arrow. I also use my turn signals. Today it seems that letting other drivers know what move your vehicle is going to make next is out of style.

We've spent all this time learning how to get along in society, and then they go and change the culture on us. I'm not sure who "they" is, but can't we have any influence on them?

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Sometimes I have this disturbing thought: Am I starting to act more like my parents because they had so many years of influence on me? Or is it because I inherited some of the genes that make me mimic the things I definitely do not want to do?

If it’s the former, I can vow to change and then try to catch myself and reverse the activity. But if it’s the latter? I’m doomed…

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My husband and I are aging together, although not necessarily gracefully. As ungraceful agers, we can be heard uttering these words and phrases, more often than I should admit: Watchamacallit. (As in, "Switch the watchamacallit from my car to yours.") What's-her-name. (As in, "Didn't we see him at What's-her-name's party?") That thing. (As in, "Can you hand me that thing?")

It would be better if one of us could remember the nouns, proper and otherwise, that belong to common utensils—or the TV remote—or people we worked with long ago. I call it our "un-noun territory." (Groaning is appropriate here.)

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That's all for now. Time to play Boggle and stop thinking so much.

Eye yi yi yi...

I've learned that impulse buys are not just the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup you grab while you're waiting for the cashier to count the hundred pennies the customer in front of you just handed her. An impulse buy—if you're me—can be something as important as contact lenses.

Yes, I may have contact lenses to add to my list of things labeled "What Was I Thinking?" Here's how this took place.

At my annual checkup with the opthamologist, I found myself saying, "I think I'd like to try contacts again." This was probably a bad idea for so many reasons.

Although I wore contacts years ago, they were gas permeable (hard) lenses. Fewer companies are making those anymore because soft lenses, especially disposable ones, are so popular. I have no real experience with the soft ones. My only minor brush with soft lenses was an earlier attempt with a different eye doc, and it was a disaster. I wasn't able to put them in and gave up.

Gas permeables are not a good option for me because I plan to wear my new contacts only when going to a big party. Big as in a ballroom, like my high school reunion or the company holiday dinner dance. Occasional wear calls for soft contacts, especially for women of a certain age who, usually, have dry eyes.

They must be distance-only lenses, so the contacts would be useful only at places where I didn't plan to read or type anything.

Basically, this was not a logical decision. I just decided to try something new (or something from a long time ago that I wanted to resurrect). So we set up an appointment for the fitting.

As I sat down in the chair for the appointment, I was certain that soft contacts had improved, and I woudn't have the problems I experienced earlier. (That silly little watery disc seemed to disappear on my finger or fall into the sink, and by the time I got it into my eye, my mascara was dribbling down my cheeks.) No. That wasn't going to happen this time. Modern technology would save the day!

After a couple of attempts, I got them into my eyes. I was proud. Then it was time to remove them. I swear I grabbed and pinched and flexed my index finger until it ached. Eventually I got them out, but I was uneasy. What if I was at home and couldn't remove a lens? What if it was during the medical office's non-working hours? Would I have to go to the emergency room? Silly thought. Or was it? The nurse who was working with me told me she once had to call the doctor and have him meet her in the office on his day off because she couldn't remove one lens. Great. Then a good friend told me that, during her only experience with soft lenses, she was ready to go to the ER when she finally got one out.

Now I was spooked. And the lenses have been sitting in my cabinet since then, untouched. What was I thinking? I'm willing to try them again, but shouldn't I wait until I'm sure someone is in the office to help me if I need it?

On the day of my eye checkup, I was thinking vainly, not clearly. The proof? I also asked the doctor about getting my eyelids done, and he handed me a business card for a plastic surgeon. Fortunately, I misplaced the card and don't plan to make an impulsive phone call. I also concluded that I could take the money I would spend on contacts, and possibly elective surgery, and buy several pairs of youthful eyeglasses. And as a bonus, the frames would hide some of the crows feet and undereye bags. Now there's a plan.

Take my word for it

Taking advice from health experts who remind us to learn new things to keep our brains supple, I have acquired—but, alas, not learned—a number of new words by playing Boggle. That is, I’ve exclaimed “That’s a word?” after hitting a series of three letters by accident. Sometimes it’s no accident, but I’ve exhausted all the words I know and I start hitting letters with desperation. Here are the ones I now use most often:

ain, ait, alt, ane, ava, dan, del, dev, het, lev, oda, ora, ree, ret, tae, ted, taw, tew, tun

String them together, and I may sound like I’m speaking Erse (that’s a word I’ve learned from crossword puzzles, along with adit and sere).

This would be helpful if I took a few minutes to look up these unfamiliar words. I’d be exercising my brain and learning something new, however nearly useless. But I don’t. I’m sure that if I get bored some day, I’ll do just that…No, I’ll do better than that. For the sake of this post, I’ll take the time to see what a few of these words mean—in case you were dying to know.

ain: a Scottish word for own or the 18th letter of the arabic alphabet

tun: a large cask for holding liquids, especially wine, ale, or beer

taw: a fancy marble used as a shooter (I was pretty sure it didn’t refer to Tweety Talk, as in “I taw a puddy tat”)

tae: a Scottish word for to, too, or toe (as in English, the word multi-tasks)

lev: a coin and monetary unit of Bulgaria, equal to 100 stotinki (drop that at the next cocktail party and watch the crowd thin out around you)

oda: a room within a harem (I doubt I'll be using that one in a sentence anytime soon)

I’m not sure any of our lives are richer for knowing these terms. I do know, though, that using them with some other word games is of no value. Word Warp—a new way I’ve found to waste my time—doesn’t recognize most of them.

Switching to cheap

I admit to being somewhat of a product snob—at least for certain items. That’s odd in itself because, like most of us our age, I’m the child of Depression-era parents. They knew what it meant to have only enough money to live on with no extras for luxuries, and my mother was the queen of bargains. One day, after an afternoon of shopping, she presented me with the ugliest bathing suit I have ever seen. When I told her I didn’t like it, she exclaimed, “But it was only a dollar!” I believe I actually wore that suit, and if I can find the incriminating photo or two, I’ll post them here. After all, the statute of limitations on dorkiness has expired…hasn’t it?

My father was a mail carrier, moving his way up to foreman and, ultimately, Director of Customer Service of Chicago’s Main Post Office. But during my early years, he schlepped mail. I thought it was cool because he’d bring home the most wonderful candy and trinkets during the Christmas season. One unforgettable gift was a cigarette box. When you wanted to smoke (not that I ever did), you pressed the tail of a bird and he bobbed into the stash of cigarettes and came up with one in his beak. As a kid, I loved it. I’m sure my parents would have rather had cash.

So I've set the stage to say that we didn't have much money when I was growing up. I never felt deprived, and I always had enough clothing and accessories. They just weren't—usually—good brands.

As I reached middle age and was making a decent salary on my own, I gave myself permission to buy better: Marshall Field's, Lord and Taylor, Chico's, and Nordstrom were shopping havens for me. Sometimes I would accompany friends to boutiques and spend more on one item than I had on whole outfits in the past.

As for makeup, I got hooked on Lancome, Shiseido, and other department store brands. Once I discovered Lancome's Definicils mascara, it was the only one I used. I also relied for a long time on the samples I received as a gift with purchase, so I have many lipsticks and eye shadow quads. If I really liked a color and ran out of the sample, I bought the full-price version.

Then, a few years ago, I saw Queen Latifah on a TV ad for Cover Girl. The product was LashExact, a mascara with a brush made of plastic bristles that promised to cover each lash....like Definicils does. I bought it, then other versions of Cover Girl mascara, and I haven't looked back. The same thing happened with lipstick (and it also involved a Queen Latifah commercial). I now have a collection of Cover Girl lipsticks and glosses. And they're much cheaper than department store brands! One problem I discovered is that, because they cost so comparatively little, I think nothing of buying more than I need. Who needs four tubes of mascara and eight lip glosses?

When it came to clothing, I would dismiss stores like Kohl's and Target. If I wanted bargains, I'd go for more mainstream brands at Marshall's and TJ Maxx and Nordstrom Rack. Those stores are still in play, but I've become a Kohl's convert. I love the fact that practically everything is on sale all the time. And I know now that some very good brands (Dana Buchman, Chaps, Nine West, Vera Wang, to name a few) have lines they design just for Kohl's.

You might say that being semi-retired has something to do with it. But I'm also genuinely happy with the items I buy at the lower cost shops. I haven't abandoned my taste for Jones New York or Chicos—as long as what I want is on sale—but I've renounced my old snobbish thoughts. As always, the only test the product I buy has to pass is this one: Does this item make me look old? If it does, I'm not buying it, even if it's “only a dollar”—or the 21st century equivalent.

No fathers, just memories

Father’s Day is approaching, but—sadly—there are no more fathers around for us to shower with shirts that don't fit, ties they don’t need, and, in one unpleasant instance, a fancy-schmancy showerhead that my father looked at and handed right back to me. This didn’t cause me psychological damage. I understood that my father knew what he liked and didn’t like, and this time I got it wrong. Almost every other time he told me I gave him the best presents, and with his penchant for honesty, I knew he meant it.

There’s the father of my kids, whom I’m no longer married to but wish well. He’ll be amply gifted by our daughters. My husband doesn’t have kids and he came into my daughters’ lives way too late for them to think of him as other than their mother’s husband—although they treat him with kindness.

So, this week there are no cards to buy, no masculine—frivolous—gadgets to look for. But I can reflect.

My father died in 1997 at the age of 80. By that time, we could no longer communicate because Parkinson’s had affected his mind. We couldn’t tell if he understood anything we were saying. One of the last memories I have, before the one-day hospice stay he endured—was a small birthday party at his nursing home. He attempted to eat the cake, although Parkinson’s had attacked his ability to swallow properly too, but I’m not sure he knew what we were celebrating.

After my mother died in 2005, we cleared out their condo and got rid of bagsful of stuff—Depression-era parents saved nearly everything—but I held onto the items that either brought back memories or I thought I might need. Today, I still have what I refer to as “the shrine.” In a small section of my closet are papers, trinkets, photos, death notices—you never know when you might need another one—and other things I swear I’m going to go through and purge one day.

Besides the shrine, there are Rubbermaid boxes of stuff that we finally are going through (probably to make space for our own junk). Among other papers in one of the boxes is a stack of my father’s poems. He wrote most of them in the late 40s and early 50s, and whenever I come across them I see different parts of this often quiet man’s inner being. Here’s a short one that made me smile and that I recognized as truly him:

            

           Movies

I doff my hat to the clever wit

Who worked and worried, bit by bit,

Till he evolved, to our surprise

That wondrous gift to please our eyes:

Pictures that move.

And, on the subject, it’s only fair

To mention the others who did their share,
I bow low to the engineers
Who brought this boon to our happy ears:

Pictures that talk.

With all these gifts at their command,

You can readily understand

Why I’d like to dump in the lake

All the guys who continually make

Pictures that smell.

There are others, including a much longer, serious one about the disappointment GIs faced when coming home to live the American dream from World War II, written in August 1948. I’ll publish that one in the future.

Until then, I wish fathers everywhere a happy day and hope that you cherish your family and that they let you know they feel the same.